SpaceX's $10 Billion Satellite Internet Plan

Trending News: Elon Musk Has A New Hairbrained Idea To Provide Internet On Mars

Why Is This Important?

Because three billion people on Earth and plenty of Martians are tragically without high-speed Internet.

Long Story Short

Elon Musk unveiled a new plan to create a network of satellites 750 miles above Earth to provide high-speed Internet to regions around the world that have limited access. The system would also be used down the line to connect people who live on cities on Mars.

Long Story

You have to wonder if Elon Musk is obsessed with knocking people off their chairs with his hairbrained schemes or if he just doesn’t care what anybody thinks and knocks us off our chairs anyway.

After having made global headlines last week for being the first ever to attempt an unmanned rocket landing on a tiny ship in the ocean (see photos), and announcing a test track for his futuristic transport endeavor HyperLoop on Friday, Musk has unveiled a new game-changing plan to make Internet on Earth that much faster.

Prior to an event announcing a new SpaceX office in Seattle, Musk told Bloomberg Businessweek about his new plan to connect a system of hundreds of satellites that would orbit about 750 miles above Earth providing Internet 40 percent faster than what we experience with land-based fiber cables.

“Our focus is on creating a global communications system that would be larger than anything that has been talked about to date,” said Musk to Bloomberg.

But if making less choppy Skype calls from New York to Rwanda and Internet access to the estimated three billion people on the planet with little-to-no connection isn’t enough, Musk says building a global network is an investment in the future colonies on Mars he dreams of building.

“We see it as a long-term revenue source for SpaceX to be able to fund a city on Mars,” he said.

Musk says he doesn’t want to work with Wyler because SpaceX’s satellites would be much more high-tech, but Branson bets Musk will have to work with OneWeb eventually

“I don’t think Elon can do a competing thing,” Branson is quoted as saying in the Bloomberg article. “Greg has the rights, and there isn’t space for another network—like there physically is not enough space. If Elon wants to get into this area, the logical thing for him would be to tie up with us, and if I were a betting man, I would say the chances of us working together rather than separately would be much higher.”

Musk estimates his satellite plan won’t be ready for at least five years and would cost around $10 billion.

Own The Conversation

Disrupt Your Feed: Sure Musk is a billionaire, but is dropping $10 billion with the hopes of making the money back through his Mars pipe-dream actually a good investment?

Drop This Fact: At the end of an article like this you might see something like ‘SpaceX’s stock dropped (or rose) so and so percentage points up or down’, but SpaceX isn’t public. That’s due to Musk’s longterm goal of a colony on Mars as told to Bloomberg “The reason I haven’t taken SpaceX public is the goals of SpaceX are very long-term ... to establish a city on Mars”.